Over the years, various mail feeding, handling, and sorting systems have been developed for feeding, handling, and sorting pieces of mail. Adhesive tabs or seals have also been used to close or seal the loose edges of a paper, brochure, envelope, magazine or other articles of mail being handled or transported. The loose edge of a piece of mail, for example, is closed or sealed to allow the mail to be handled by feeding and processing machinery and to provide a degree of confidential nature to the closed or sealed mail. Increasing the speed and accuracy of placement of these tabs, however, has become more important as mail quantities increase, as labor becomes more expensive, and as more and improved automation is desired.
In order to provide significant improvements in the speed and efficiency in placing of these tabs, systems were developed for aligning and tabbing mail. An example of such a system can be seen in U.S. Pat. No. 5,393,366 by Bell titled "Aligning And Tabbing Method And Apparatus." This patent is also assigned to the same assignee of the present application. This patent describes an apparatus which rotates an article 90 degrees to be aligned properly to receive tabs.
Mail, however, can vary significantly in thicknesses, material substrates, e.g., coated or slick stock, recycled paper, bond stock, newsprint, and booklets, widths, and lengths. Tabbing or sealing such a variety of or intermixed pieces of mail can be difficult. Accordingly, there still exists a need for a method and system for a more efficient and quicker method and apparatus for selectively feeding and tabbing intermixed pieces of mail and still having some assurance that a selected edge thereof will be quickly and efficiently tabbed or sealed.